A Memory of Violets Read Online Free PDF Page B

and settled back into her seat, several church bells chiming the hour as she did, as if to confirm the time, in case she had doubted him. The wheels of the car juddered beneath her as they bounced along the uneven roads.
    Happy to let the driver concentrate on navigating through the traffic rather than chatting, Tilly settled her gaze outside. She was fascinated by the motorcars swarming over the road like an army of black ants. She stared at all the unfamiliar sights: street sellers pushing handcarts piled high with precarious mountains of vegetables; the muffin men carrying great trays of muffins on their heads and ringing their handbells to attract attention; groups of smartly dressed newspaper vendors calling out the day’s headlines; knife grinders, bootblacks, match sellers, flower sellers—the streets were crowded with people shouting their wares, walking easily among the hansom cabs, trams, motor buses, and carriages.
    Buildings hugged the streets in every direction, the shop fronts covered with huge boards advertising soap, meat, stout and ales,coffee and tonics. Posters and billboards promoted the suffragette newspaper as well as glamorous-sounding theater shows at the Olympia and the Palace. One proclaimed the terrifying experience of the Chamber of Horrors exhibit at Madame Tussauds. Tilly stared in wonder at it all, noticing the thick fog that cast a strange yellow light over everything and everyone, making the scene look almost unreal. She was about to ask the driver what the Chamber of Horrors was when he had to swerve suddenly to avoid a stationary hansom cab.
    â€œOf course, you’ll have heard the story of the girl who died there,” he announced, seemingly unconcerned about the collision he had just avoided.
    Tilly leaned forward so she could hear better. “I’m sorry. What girl? Where?”
    â€œAt the Crippleage. You did say that’s where you’re going, didn’t you? Shaw’s Crippleage?”
    â€œYes. Yes, that’s right.”
    â€œIrish girl. Sad, really.”
    Tilly was confused. Why did everyone insist on talking in riddles today? “Somebody died there? What happened?”
    â€œSay she died of a broken heart. Missed her sister, see.”
    â€œHer sister? But where was her sister?”
    â€œAin’t nobody knew—not a soul. She didn’t like to talk about it, what with her being so sad about it all the time. Heard she’d been taken to the workhouse, or taken in by a gang of pickpockets. Something unpleasant, anyway.”
    â€œThat’s very sad.”
    â€œNot uncommon in those days, though, Miss—still ain’t. There’s men taking girls off the streets all over London. Teach ’em a life of crime they do—show ’em how to take the gentlemen’s pocket watches and the ladies’ purses. They take thecrippled kids ’cause nobody would suspect a cripple of stealing, now, would they?”
    Tilly was shocked by the driver’s tale. “And how old were the sisters?”
    â€œOnly young. Don’t think the littlest would have been more than four year old when she went missing. I was just a young coster lad back then—before I started with the hansom cabs and the hackneys and now this contraption. I knew them two girls from the markets. Never saw a day when they weren’t together, trudging around barefooted, selling their scrawny bunches of violets and primroses and watercress. Broke the older girl’s heart it did when the little one went missing. That’s what they say anyway. ’Course, I never seen her since.” He paused to concentrate on making a difficult right turn across the continual stream of traffic.
    Tilly tugged again at her blouse, wishing she could undo the top buttons. Or was it her corset that felt like it was choking her? She wriggled and fidgeted in her seat, her breaths coming quick and shallow. She didn’t like the feeling of being hemmed